The university admissions clearing house’s fraud detection system marked 52% of black students for investigation, its own research revealed.
Photograph: Alamy

The university admissions service Ucas is under pressure after an investigation revealed that more than half of all applications flagged for possible fraud are from black students.

Ucas researchers found that over a five-year period 52% of applications investigated for potential fraudulent activity were from black candidates, even though they only make up 9% of total applications.

In contrast, over the same period – between 2013 and 2017 – just 19% of all suspicious applications were from white students, even though they make up 73% of all applications. Asian students made up 11% of applicants and 16% of those flagged.

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Ucas conducted its investigation after a freedom of information request by the Independent earlier this year indicated the process for investigating fraud in university applications was far more likely to demand proof of claims from black applicants than white ones.

That request focused on figures for 2017, but Ucas’s subsequent investigation shows the same pattern over a five-year period, with a total of 2,675 black applicants being flagged out of an applicant population of 260,550.

Out of 2.1m applications from white students over the same period, 995 were flagged. Around 40% of flagged applications were cancelled by Ucas, a figure broadly proportionate to the percentages flagged in each ethnic group.

Ucas’s chief executive Clare Marchant said the investigation had shown that applications were only being cancelled where there was clear evidence of fraud or missing information. But she said “there is more work for us to do to ensure that flagging is as robust as it can be across all areas of the verification service.”

Ucas needs to ... satisfy students from ethnic minorities that their applications will be looked upon fairly

David Lammy

One of the areas of potential weakness identified by Ucas was the industry standard fraud detection software it deploys as one method of screening applications. It uses an accumulation of historic data as a reference that may have contributed to the results.

Ucas said enhancements had already been made to the fraud detection service. It also promised to introduce an additional review of all applications prior to cancellation to avoid errors and said it would ensure that all staff had up-to-date unconscious bias training.

The former education minister and Labour MP David Lammy called for greater transparency in the university admissions process. “Ucas need to explain why over half of all flagged applicants are black, despite black students accounting for just one in 10 applications,” he said.

“Ucas needs to be able to explain this huge disproportionality and satisfy students from ethnic minorities that their applications will be looked upon fairly.”

Overall the total number of university applications flagged for further investigation was small – out of 2.9 million applicants over the past five years 5,160 applications were flagged, of which just over 2,000 were then cancelled.

The screening process was designed to spot fake qualifications, plagiarised personal statements and inaccurate information which could give would-be students an unfair advantage. In all the screening systems used Ucas insisted ethnicity and nationality played no part.

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The findings come amid growing concern about the experiences of black and ethnic minority students studying at universities and colleges in the UK, and mounting anger that they remain underrepresented in the country’s top universities.

Lammy, who has campaigned on this issue, said: “I have long been concerned about the lack of transparency in our admissions process as a result of Ucas refusing to publish all of its access data openly.

“This is clearly a necessary change so that we can fully understand what is going on within our university admissions process across the board.” Ucas has since said that figures on its verification service would now be published annually.

A Department for Education spokesman said any bias against people due to their ethnicity or background was completely unacceptable and welcomed the Ucas investigation.

“We have seen record entry rates at universities across all ethnic groups, but we recognise there is more to do. We have introduced sweeping reforms through the Higher Education and Research Act requiring all universities to publish applications, offers and acceptance rates broken down by gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic background.”